The Plea

The Plea of Man for the Conservation of Species

To forbid, to prohibit is to encourage the illegal and even illicit trade. It condemns many populations to its downfall and, by starvation, drifts them from their land.

To harvest an animal to sustain one's life is, first and foremost, to maintain culture and traditions that have ancestral ties and have firmly bound local populations.

Man and animals are bound together: to remove man from the environment is to sentence animals to death. To allow the extinction of animals is to bring to an end man's existence.

Wildlife resources should not be plundered but maintained in such a way as to facilitate their constant renewal. In this, they will provide to man the indispensable resources that sustain life.

Everything begins with man and, in fact, also ends with man. The true conservator of species is man. The regulator is, once again, man.

All-preservation, all-prohibition without regard to the future of man, is fundamentalism that will lead to but one consequence. That of death.

We cannot let ourselves be mislead by traffickers of sensational pictures or by exploiters of emotion who, with their substantial financial resources, seek to destabilize entire and defenseless populations.

We must have confidence in man and not conspire to condemn him. To respect his right to live in an environment, which is his, represents the most effective and sensible means of preserving all living resources.